Obviously, the "Book of the Romans" collected by Villa was indeed a rare treasure, but its contents were entirely written in classical Latin, and Rurik was unable to understand its contents.
Unless a Roman priest who was proficient in ancient Latin taught him personally, it would be very unrealistic to think about such a thing.
After reading through it, Rurik made a decision.
"I'm going to find a new wooden box to keep it in. Maybe it's most suitable to keep it in a dry room. If I put it in my home, I'm afraid it will get damaged."
Vilia nodded: "Okay, I will find a new lock. I hope you will keep your promise."
"I will. But I'm a little curious. The text recorded in the book seems to be a kind of animal skin." Rurik said this deliberately. He guessed that it was parchment, but he didn't understand the Latin or Latin language of parchment. It's the Greek pronunciation.
"It's made of sheepskin, which is better than our oak boards. Unfortunately, we don't have the method to make it." Villa sighed slightly, "If we could also use specially processed sheepskin as a writing instrument like the Romans did, Materials, look at the wooden boards in this room, can actually be turned into several books."
Rurik deeply felt Vilia's yearning and respect for the far south. Perhaps it was this emotion that made her accept the gift from the man in black.
It was getting late, and Rurik was finishing his dinner in the priest's longhouse.
The so-called dinner is a little boiled wheat porridge with salt and some pickled meat.
The dinner was bland, and the people of the entire Ross tribe had not experienced the real delicacies of mountains and seas. The touch of a little honey on the tip of their tongues made them feel that Valhalla was nothing more than that.
Rurik had to get used to all this. Only when he grew up could he express his personal ambitions for the tribe.
No one understood what kind of prosperity he meant by "bringing prosperity to the tribe".
Our concept of happiness is very simple. Small families in every tribe can live in a warm house, not go hungry all year round, have enough comfortable clothes and daily necessities to have multiple children and keep the whole family healthy. There is more wealth on this basis.
However, in the current era, Scandinavia is a barren world on a macro scale.
The most adventurous of the Swedes, the Swedes, left their native homeland.
Those who stayed had the end of the crazy "Viking Age" and could only continue to live in the still barren Svealand region, until the Swedish monarchs thought of establishing a trading nation. Selling their own iron products for profit made the Swedes make a fortune hundreds of years later. They further strengthened the processing technology of iron products, actively developed ocean trade, and eventually became the largest industrial power in Northern Europe.
These are the glory of the descendants of the Siyan tribe alliance a thousand years later.
Unfortunately, these honors have nothing to do with the Ross tribe.
Just because their whole family moved.
The resources near Fort Ross were depleted on a large scale, and crazy hunters prevented large beasts from approaching the fjord. For the development of local iron mines, the blacksmiths in Roseburg have no more ideas.
Maybe the tribe does not need any external stimulus to leave, and it is fate that leaves them. Just like a nomadic people, when a grazing pasture is eaten up by sheep, the migration of the entire tribe is inevitable.
After Rurik officially came into contact with the wooden boards with written texts, in the following days, when he woke up, he would rush to the priest's longhouse as soon as possible. His carved alphabet plate is a "translation board" that can be used at any time.
He was pleasantly surprised that those "ancient books" compiled in rune letters had sentence fragments, so reading was not difficult.
In fact, in just three days, Rurik read through all the wooden boards in Vilia's collection, which also allowed him to get a proud glimpse into the past of the Rus' people.
They, including myself, are real Swedes!
It was another cold morning. Although there was no clock, Rurik estimated based on his feeling that it was probably ten o'clock in the morning when he woke up.
Everything was really just a feeling, because he felt that the sun would reach its highest point within a short time.
Even though it was noon, the angle of the sun was really bad.
It was this morning that Rurik told Vilia in front of her the profound feelings of studying for three days.
"Grandma, I think my mind is very smart. I have read all the wooden boards you have stored, and I have written down all the contents. I also know everything about the past of us Russians."
Villa was very surprised for a moment, "My child, you mean that you have completely learned that knowledge?"
"Yes. For example, I know that we moved to Rosberg seventy years ago, and we also drove away the Finns. Our homeland was in the south, and the tribesmen moved one hundred and fifty rost before arriving here."
In fact, Rurik was also very surprised that the Ross tribe, or the entire Viking group, had clear weights and measures.
He was not sure how far the length unit word translated into rost in Roman letters was. Considering that its meaning was "half the distance a traveler walked from one resting point to another", its definition was too vague. After all, By no means is it a short distance unit.
Rurik estimated that this rost was the basic distance unit commonly used by the Russians.
It is indeed very "basic", because it is the concept equivalent to "kilometer" commonly used by the Vikings. Its length unit is converted into the metric length a thousand years later, which is very close to 1600 meters.
Not only this, Rurik got more concepts of weights and measures from those wooden boards that have great historical significance. Who carved the words on the wooden board? According to Villa's explanation, part of it was the work of predecessors, and most of it was her own.
Rurik asked in passing: "Grandma, now I know exactly what kind of currency I should pay when exchanging animal skins and cloth with distant merchants. How to determine the distance from our Roseburg to a distant place. I even Know how to determine my own height. It seems you were the one who carved this information into the wood."
At this moment, Villa was deeply moved by the young Rurik.
She said bluntly: "Yes! I carved those all just to ensure that people in the future will not suffer losses when exchanging animal skins or get lost when sailing. I think all tribesmen should know the unit of length. , so that when they cut down big trees to make ship keels, they would not fail to estimate the length incorrectly, and they would not cut out ill-fitting clothes.
Unfortunately, they would rather trust their common sense, but they don't know that the simplest things often need to be clearly determined to prevent slow changes from violating the original intention. "
Rurik nodded. He really understood what Vilya meant. He was also quite emotional in his heart. Unexpectedly, an old man over seventy years old who lived in the ninth century was very clearly aware of the importance of ensuring the standardization of weights and measures. significance.
Regarding weights and measures, each country and each nation often has its own unique definition, but world trade is ultimately becoming more international.
Businessmen always care about everything in order to pursue fairness between buyers and sellers. Then the conversion of different units of weights and measures often requires some fractions to be omitted, so someone will always suffer. Perhaps, Rome's influence can still cover the entire Europe, Roman weights and measures will continue to be used, and the trade situation in ancient Europe will be better.
Of course this is not the case!
The Frankish Empire had its own set of regulations, and so did the Visigothic Kingdom. In the chaos of the British countries, weights and measures can be described as diverse.
The Eastern Romans still had great influence, but their weights and measures were far different from those of the unified Rome of the past.
Even the Baltic region has its own unique system of weights and measures. Rosberg uses this system, but the residents of Novgorod, the "servants" of the Russians, also have their own weights and measures system of the Slavic tribes. .
Therefore, people who do business must have good enough oral arithmetic skills, otherwise they will suffer big losses!
Based on these factors, Rurik asked tentatively: "Grandma, you should have a way to measure my height? You should have a hemp rope with a length of only one stika (about 98 centimeters), right?"
Vilia's eyes lit up. She asked Rurik to wait for a moment, then stood up from the animal hide where she was sitting, and soon brought over a thick hemp rope dyed with dark red moss.
